It’s far away and seems unimportant in South Florida, but the failure of a proposed commuter rail system for the Orlando area is a blow to Broward and other areas in the southeast part of the state.

The assessment comes from George LeMieux, who is more plugged into what’s going on in Tallahassee – at least in the executive branch of government – than just about anyone else.

LeMieux, offering a review of the 2009 legislative session at a luncheon speech at the Riverside Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, said the failure of legislation to create SunRail in Central Florida is bad news for South Florida.

The proposal was contentious in the Legislature, and overwhelmingly political. Basically it would have diverted freight traffic and led to a commuter rail line allowing people to commute through Central Florida to downtown Orlando.

“That failed, and it’s bad,” he said.

That’s not just because South Florida legislators hoped they could get a rental car tax included in the legislation to fund Tri-Rail.

It’s bad, LeMieux said, because the legislation would have set up a legal framework that could be duplicated in South Florida, where many political and business leaders want to convert the Florida East Coast Railway tracks to a passenger rail system.

“Imagine if you will if you wanted to go to Miami to a Heat game or do business or go to court that you could get on a train right here and go to downtown Miami, or if you wanted to go to Boca or CityPlace in West Palm,” LeMieux said. “Central Florida was in many ways the kind of precursor for [what many want] to do in South Florida.”

“It really could change the way we live and work,” he said. Ultimately – “this is really dreaming” – a North-South railroad could lead to east-west spurs along Interstate 595, plus northern Broward and two or three in Miami-Dade County.

“One can dream. That would be a much better way of us getting around in South Florida than all of us getting on 95 or the turnpike,” he said.

LeMieux also:

Praised Crist and the Legislature of accepting federal stimulus money – even though he said the conservative perspective, that Washington, D.C., printing money ultimately will lead to higher inflation. “If they’re passing out money in Washington, Florida deserves its fair share. We deserve this money. It’s our money. It’s your money that you pay taxes on.”

Also, without the stimulus money the state would have had to make much deeper cuts in the state budget. The state budget, which was $76 billion in 2006, would have been down to $61 billion without the $5 billion on federal stimulus money, he said.

Touted the legislation that allows 15 percent annual increases in public university tuition until it gets to the national average. The only top 50 public university in the state is the University of Florida – and it’s No. 49.

The reason Florida’s universities rank so poorly is they don’t get enough money. UF tuition of $4,000 a year is less than LeMieux pays each year in Tallahassee for the pre-Kindergarten program for his young son.

Predicted the governor is likely to sign the controversial legislation that would revamp growth management laws, loosening many restrictions on developers.

Many local governments are lobbying against the measure. “I think the governor will sign it, but I think there’s been a lot of opposition from cities about this.”

Currently chairman of the Gunster law firm, and producer of The LeMieux Report, he was deputy attorney general when Charlie Crist was the attorney general. He orchestrated Crist’s winning 2006 gubernatorial campaign – one of the few Republican successes anywhere in the country that year – earning the appellation “maestro” from the governor.

LeMieux is a Coral Springs High School graduate, is a former Broward Republican Party chairman, and his affection for Broward is so strong he has termed it “God’s Country,” a label sometimes used by Crist.

During a speech late in 2007, he explained how the label "God's Country" came about.

"I was in a meeting when I worked for the attorney general with some folks that were in government. And most of the people in government live in north Florida. And I started to get this sense that there was a little bit of prejudice toward South Florida. Sort of like the well you know when the money goes down there it all get screwed up. So I said to them you know that's where all the people live who pay all the taxes that fund the government. So we should be respectful of the people in South Florida.

"And since that time I started calling Broward God's Country, and every once in a while I get the governor to say it, which is probably not in his best interests, since he has to represent the whole state. But we advocate for Broward. And I want you to know that every day when I get to sit next to this governor in the governor's office, I advocate for Broward."

Thursday’s audience of about 200 was predominately a business and legal crowd. There are also a slew of political people, including Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar, Broward Republican Chairman Chip LaMarca, Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Romney Rogers and Hospital District Commissioner Joseph Cobo.

Leave a Reply

COMMENT BOARD GUIDELINES:

You share in the SunSentinel.com community, so we just ask that you keep things civil.
Leave out the personal attacks. Do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone's sexual orientation or religion.
If you can't be nice, we reserve the right to remove your material and ban users who violate our Terms of Service.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Name (required)

E-mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Comment:

Verification (needed to reduce spam):

Advertisement

About the authors

Broward County is an unusually rich territory for political news. The Broward Politics blog is devoted to the politicians, the activists, the parties, the policies, the issues, the elections - in the county and its communities.

ANTHONY MAN is the Sun Sentinel’s political writer. Concentrating on local political people, parties and trends, he also covers state and national politics from a South Florida perspective. He's coordinating the Broward Politics blog with contributions from reporters throughout the county. Before moving to the Broward political beat, he covered politics and Palm Beach County government for the Sun-Sentinel, including touch-screen voting and the Supervisor of Elections Office. He's also covered municipal, county, state, and federal elections and made repeated reporting trips to Tallahassee for regular and special sessions of the Florida Legislature. He joined the Sun-Sentinel in 2002 after covering state and local politics in Illinois. Like so many others in South Florida, he's originally from a New York suburb (Rockland County).

BRITTANY WALLMAN covers Broward County and news. A 1991 University of Florida graduate, Wallman started her journalism career at the Fort Myers News Press. She and her husband Bob Norman have two young children -- Creed and Lily. Wallman was born in Iowa and spent half her childhood there, the remainder in Oklahoma. She has covered local government and elections her entire reporting career -- including covering the infamous 2000 recount here in the presidential election. (She has a Mason jar with a "hanging chad'' inside to prove it.)

LARRY BARSZEWSKI covers Fort Lauderdale and Wilton Manors. In the past, he has reported on Palm Beach County government and schools, aging and social issues, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach and state legislative sessions. He wrote for the Denver Post, Bradenton Herald and Miami Herald before joining the Sun Sentinel in 1988. A Massachusetts native, he lives in Boca Raton with his wife, Maggie, and teenage daughters Jessica and Jackie.